The Short-Sighted Game

I’m sure that you’ve read Fast Company article about Apple playing the long game. It’s fascinating and, despite the deliberately click-bait title I’ve used here, I think it’s generally true for Apple.

However, there is one area where they don’t get things right. Here’s where I think Cook does it again:

“When you look at most of the solutions, whether it’s devices, or things coming up out of Big Pharma, first and foremost, they are done to get the reimbursement [from an insurance provider]. Not thinking about what helps the patient. So if you don’t care about reimbursement, which we have the privilege of doing, that may even make the smartphone market look small.”

The problem I see here the pure USA-first vision. Big Pharma is big all over the world, but there are only a few places where the insurance providers have such a great stake in heath care.

It’s easy to get stuck in a US, or even Silicon Valley, bubble, not realising that the rest of the world works differently. This time it’s health care. Last time it was thinking that everyone uses swipe credit cards.

These are great markets in America, meanwhile a billion Indians are having a hard time getting an Apple product and the Chinese are putting up obstacles. A company the size of Apple can’t afford to think only in terms of opportunites in the US. Clearly isn’t not going to fail with this attitude but it could limit its future growth.